Once I have loaded my steampunk laptop (see previous post) into the gypsy caravan, along with my sister Babette, her dog, my cat, and a teakettle (of course), this is the map we will be consulting:
Map via danmeth.com
We'll be singing all the way.
Another grey day. What to do? Even I can drink only so much tea. Mrs. Peel strolled into her little carry crate hours ago, curled up in a ball, and went to sleep. The crate is in my office, with its door always open; she likes to nestle there when I am at the computer. And indeed, I have been at the computer, trying to create and maintain an illusion called Getting Things Done. Things are never completely Done, especially when I am distracted. I miss my friends in England. In fact, I miss England.
I might need a scone.
A scone is, to me, what a madeleine was to Proust, and what the Tardis is to Dr. Who. But, there is no scone in this apartment, and there is no scone in this neighborhood, either. Without one, how else do I visit England in dream-quick time? It's actually easy.
Poets speak of "the wings of song", and for good reason.
Off I go, with two of my favorite British singers:
June Tabor...
...and Maddy Prior.
I'm back. The NY skies may still be grey, there may still be no scone, but the scent of the rain is sweeter, and the inspiration, bright.
About that painting up top.... That will be me and Mrs. Peel, in another 50 years or so.
A long-time-dream came true when, after knowing the gents in Little Feat and loving their music for many years, I sat in with them in - gosh, when was it? 2000? 2001? I may have forgotten the date, but I'll never forget how it felt to lay back against that fat, sensuous groove.
I don't have that moment on film. However, thanks to Chris Cafiero (Feat's archivist), we do have this clip, filmed when band members Fred Tackett and Paul Barrere toured as an accoustic duo in 2002, and I joined them on a few dates in western Massachusetts and upstate New York. This video is from the Towne Crier, in Pawling, NY. The song is Lowell George's classic Sailin' Shoes.
O, what a lovely day it was yesterday! Daffodils have made their entrance onto the city stage, and were nodding their lovely heads in the breeze. It was warm enough for me to leave my winter coat at home, and it was the first day since last October that my boots stayed in the closet, and my green shoes came out to play. The sun was shining, yet its touch was gentle. People at the bus stop and subway station were lighthearted, and the 1 was running. I think it may have been a little early to turn the air conditioning on in the train, and I did have a little shiver and an inner whinge about that. But for heaven's sake! I was high in the air on an elevated train track, and then plunged deep into the earth, zipping along, on wheels, through a tunnel dug in the beginning of the last century, and did anything from any disaster movie I have ever watched happen to me? No. All was calm, all was bright, all hail to the Transit Authority.
I have become quite fond of the 1 train since I moved to the Bronx. It's a subway for most of its Manhattan run (except for the 125th Street stop), but, running north, it pokes its head out of the tunnel at Dyckman Street (roughly 200th St.), and continues on elevated tracks, racketing across the river at 222nd or thereabouts. From the Broadway Bridge, there's a big-sky view looking west to the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Hudson River, and the Palisades. That bridge is "the Grandma Bridge" to me. For many years, my grandparents had an apartment in Washington Heights, in northern Manhattan. When my family drove in from upstate to visit them, the crossing of that bridge was the exciting almost-there point in our journey. Now it is part of my prayer geography, a place where I always think of Elsie and Leonard, and of how blessed I was to have them so very long. I was 50 when they died within a few months of each other (as is so often the way). Age did not wither them till they were in their 90s (nor custom stale their infinite stubbornness), and they are still very present to me.
Once across the river, the train continues deep into the Bronx all the way up to 242nd Street and the gorgeous Van Cortlandt Park where there is still a stable. O wonderful, wonderful, most excellent park! I still have my well-worn paddock boots. Someday soon...
Flash mob dancing at Beirut Airport - if this happened at any of the airports I have visited in the past few months, I would have been a much happier flyer.
Upon returning late last night to the Bronx after my flight from Chicago, I didn't have more than ten minutes of consciousness left in me before my brain switched off. Our foster nurse of nature is repose, Shakespeare's Gentleman said to Cordelia, and repose I did, every aching suitcase-racked muscle of me. It has taken half of today to realize that it's Wednesday; now that I know that, things seem to be falling into place, but it's almost bedtime. Still, torturous suitcase has been unpacked, and mail collected. And - O frabjous day! Callooh Callay! My box of tea came while I was away! I should be able to stay awake till the next millenium.
There is always a lot to do when I get home. Some of my friends travel very efficiently. They check items off their task lists wherever they are. They use their time well, and put in the necessary hours on their computers, and when they walk back through their front doors, the only thing they have to catch up on is laundry.
They amaze me. If I wore a cap, I'd doff it.
Regardless of my intentions, I drift when I travel. I observe, and dream, and write a bit, sniff and taste and consider. I adhere to the schedule I have to adhere to - when in a town to do a concert, for example, I show up at the theater when I am supposed to - but beyond that, though I may be productive, I may just as easily take a walk. If only my computer were lighter, if only I were more focused, if only, if only, if. But then... I would not have been able accept a last-minute invitation to sit in on a friend's theater class. I would not have found the best coffee and tea shop in Chicago. I might not know the name of the day manager of the hotel, and where that name originated. It is as much the memory of these moments as it is my cosmetics bag and the boots that I am unpacking and stowing away for later use.
For me, travel pries gravity's fingers loose - both kinds of gravity. My problems look smaller from the altitude of a plane's path, sorrow is eased by the rocking of a train, and there is precious little I can't conquer from the height of a horse's back. But getting ready to leave... well, a certain amount of whinging does happen in this apartment, usually about the demeaning and debilitating ordeal that air travel has become. Once I am in motion, though, I have a shine on my sailin' shoes, a melody in my heart, and a smile for my umbrella.
Today is Sunday. I am visiting family, near Chicago, in a town that used to be out in the country, but has grown, as Chicago has grown. The line between city and country now lies a few miles further up the road. A cold rain has been falling all day from a grey, weeping sky. With the temperature hovering near 32° F, the rain may shift to sleet or snow. But I am nestled, cozy and warm, in my father's house, a lovely, comfortable dwelling that feels like home - though I have never lived in it or in this town. But I have visited the area often enough to know how to get around, and have, over the years, been introduced to enough people here to have my own relationships with family friends. That is as close to "home" as anyone in my blood family is ever going to get,. Because we moved - a lot - perhaps twenty times before I left to live on my own, and I have racked up another thirty-odd relocations since then. We are, as a friend of mine has said, a portable people.
Peripatetic, restless, seeking, my family embodied a potent aspect of the American Dream. We lit out for the territories, in buoyant hope that things would be better down the road a piece. This buoyancy came primarily from my father. He is the most profoundly optimistic man I have ever known, and he has a very rare gift: an off-switch for worry. It’s not denial; rather, he knows how to assess what he can change and what he cannot change (which many of us can do) and then - here's his superpower - release the things he can't change.
My dad is neither a Zen master nor a Rinpoche nor a contemplative Carmelite. I don't know what it is in his deepest heart that allows him this freedom and the resulting comfort with wherever he happens to be. I certainly wish I had inherited or learned it in greater measure. For me, it comes only sometimes, in bursts. I suddenly realize that I am in the kingdom of heaven, where everything, everything, is in the hands of the One who creates, sustains, and renews. I'm not transported there, because it's always here, among us. Jesus told us, and countless holy men and women, of countless traditions have told us, in countless ways. But we don’t see it, and we need to be reminded to look. And that's what artists do: point the way and shine as much light as we have in us.
Earth's crammed with heaven, wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes - the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
This place, this earth where the blackberries grow dark and sweet, is the doorway to deep home, the place of all our seeking. What we are looking for is already here. The gift is to know it when we see it, because the knowing is home.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S.Eliot
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